The Ultimate Computer
This episode is excellent, and very timely. We live in a time where it seems like Jobs are being replaced by machinery and this episode did a great job illustrating that, especially the conversations between Kirk and McCoy. Also loved watching Daystrom watch basically himself fail and how his obsession got the better of him in the end. Also loved the action feel between the Enterprise and the four ships. One of Season 2's best episodes, in my opinion.
The reality over the years is that computers actually caused a shift, people lost jobs but it created far more than were lost, causing whole new industries to come into being. Now however, there may be more truth to it, we are starting to see real automation cause a greater baseline unemployment rate than we are used to, and that will probably continue. There are ways around this of course, but I won't go into all that here...however...
On the topic of the episode's theme...great characters, decent story but they never actually answer the question! Can man be replaced by machines or in this case AI. Instead they give the computer the same fallibility of human beings and it goes crazy.
The ultimate answer will likely be yes, computers will probably become smarter than us and will either surpass or replace us, but Trek still stubbornly holds out hope that we'll be the decision makers..and of course, in our understandable bias, we applaud the message.
RAMA
The Changeling
Hey, it's another Kirk vs. the computer episode. There was a certain charm to this one that I liked though. Maybe because it's a better version of The Motion Picture (Except for the ending which I loved for the motion picture). There were some issues, like warp 15, and Uhura's memory wipe, but it was an enjoyable episode.
This is a tough one. On the surface Changeling seems like a better episode than STTMP, but I don't see an AI this advanced being so stupid. The thought process--like most of TOS--is that computers will always be binary (already contradicted since by doutronics in the series) and therefore limited. Kirk then proceeds to talk it to death.
In STTMP, Kirk is supposed to stop the intruder, and instead stops to understand it, and while it does seem to be a thicko, not understanding things outside it's frame of reference, we can attribute that to it's high level of thought. It's not a binary thinker at all, and has reached full sentience, but it does have too much logic, and is capable of leaping beyond it's rigid quest for knowledge in it's original programming (for all we know, the planet of sentient machines it came from simply sent it out as basic tool to help others, without sentience). In something unimaginable in original Trek, Kirk helps the machine and a human actually melds with it...shocking I know.
The execution was tighter in The Changeling. Perhaps the theme is more satisfying to modern audiences. Is it really better though? If you had asked me in 1982-83 I would have said so. Now if I take all the various pros and cons, they might be close to even, with STTMP simply being more spectacular.
